I've spent some of the last two days reading articles and looking at pictures of New York City and the surrounding area, as I imagine a large portion of the country has done, and all I can think is, "I should be there. That's home."

I left New York eight years ago, for Tucson, and given how homesick I've felt for the desert in the last two years, I'm a bit surprised by how strongly I'm called by New York. Unlike leaving Tucson, leaving New York was an entirely voluntary act-- I was single, my job wasn't something I loved or planned on continuing to do, and I wanted away from the daily grind. I wanted to live somewhere easier, somewhere really different than I'd lived before, somewhere that didn't leave me quite as vulnerable to attacks of PTSD. And, over the years, when I remember New York, though I've had occasional moments of nostalgic longing, it's always been with a clear recollection of exactly why I left and an understanding that those reasons still hold. I made a life in Tucson, I found friends that became family, and I relearned how to breathe deeply.

I've seen New York after disasters, natural and otherwise, and as impressive an experience as the fortitude of her inhabitants is, it's not one that I need to live through again. I'm not as strong as she is-- I didn't shrug off the emotional impact as well as the city at large-- and I was worried that seeing the pictures of flooding and destruction and power outs, and all the wonderfully determined people that I know as my people-- New York is, in many ways, my mother country-- would trigger a panic attack. But as I've looked, what I've felt is a terrible sadness, and a longing for what I intentionally lost. I left my motherland, and I was glad of it. And now, years later, for the very first time, I honestly wish I could go back.

I can't say I understand it. I can guess that it might be because I don't think of this place as home, even though I have high school friends here, and parents, and a family of my own. I know, intimately, how hard it will be to live in the city, in the region, in the aftermath of Sandy. And I know that I won't be returning to live there-- the choices I've made, about my family, about my life, are not ones I want to undo, and that's what it would take to relocate, to return home. I'm not a glutton for punishment; I don't want to do the hard thing just because it's hard. I think, honestly, that what I'm feeling is a heretofore unknown (to me) consequence of leaving home.

New York creates New Yorkers. It's not one of those places that rejects transplants, even if they've been there for decades. But New Yorker, no matter how hard we-who-have-left cling to the moniker, really does mean something different when you live there. I happen to have been born there, to have spent many formative years there-- both as a child and a burgeoning adult-- and I am grateful to have been a New Yorker. I know that the people who live there now are already rebuilding, already improving, innovating, and invigorating the cityscape, and that what rises from the (soggy) ashes will be as beautiful as any New York has ever been-- and that, because I am a former New Yorker and not a present one, what comes back won't quite be my New York. But I'll be proud of it, grateful for it, and long for it, all the same.

My heart goes out to those that are there, and part of the process of renewal-- forced though it might be. I look forward to playing long-distance witness to what I know will be astounding creation and triumph. Change, especially the kind that comes from destruction, is monumentally hard, but there's no one who can do it quite like a New Yorker, and as someone who's been there I tip my hat in bittersweet anticipation.

The sweater is continuing apace (thirteen more rows, I think), but I'm not taking any more pictures of it until it's done being knit. The scarf is... longer. Probably. Quite frankly, no matter how much I knit on it it never seems to change. The sock, as you can see in the crappy photo above, is getting bigger; the gauge is really strange and I'm dealing with it by turning up the radio and continuing to drive. I've picked my November sock pattern: Mashad by Hunter Hammersen. I think, if I choose manly yarn, I might be able to make them for my dad... opinions solicited and welcome, because I also have a lovely purple-ish yarn wound and ready to go.

I am plugging away at the yoke of Devin's sweater, but I'm also easily distracted. So, with less than 40 rows of cables to go, I've also joined my last skein of green yarn to the Summer Garden Scarf (which is going to end up too short and I don't care, dammit, this thing has been taunting me for ages and ages and ages), and cast on a pair of socks... and then realized that in addition to being expensive and annoyingly blunt, Addi Turbos are also sized funny. I kept knitting due to sheer perversity, and because I've already ripped out two half-socks from this yarn, but the gauge is really too loose for socks.

My solution?

I found the pattern for my next sweater; now I have to get gauge. I'm still half a stitch off over four inches.

Project: SpinningI spun a little this week-- not a ton, but a little is better than nothing. I'm on to the second part of my Fractal spinning experiment, and I'm hoping I'll end up with enough yardage for little fingerless mitts. Anyone have a basic pattern they love? I think I'll have fingering weight yarn when all is said and done...

Project: Big Life Event261 days...You know, I'm really looking forward to being married; we both are. But the wedding is shaping up to be something to get through, not something I'm looking forward to. There's something wrong with that, isn't there?

I probably should have started thinking about gauge back in 2007. That was when I decided I wanted to knit my dad a scarf. I went into one of the two local yarn stores in Tucson, and bought two balls of wool that felt good, and a pair of needles that the ladies who worked there told me would work, and cast on for a ribbed scarf.

They probably shouldn't have let me walk out of the store unsupervised.

That scarf, which Dad insists on referring to as his "alpha scarf" is a minor miracle, in that I wandered back into that same LYS six months later and found another ball of the yarn (which turns out to be merino-- no wonder it felt good) from the same dye lot and finished the scarf... if by finished, it's understood that the scarf is about 14" wide and 30" long and Dad turns a funny color trying to wrap it around his neck-- which he does, regularly. It's the Alpha Scarf, after all.

(Note to self: knit Dad a scarf that isn't going to cut off the oxygen to his brain. Soon.)

Several scarves, hats, blankets, and one pair of ill-fated mittens later, I started with sweater knitting. My first adult sweater was Goodale, a lovely little pattern written for fingering weight yarn. What did I cast on in? Malabrigo Worsted. Hey, it was pretty, it was in my stash (although, there wasn't enough in my stash-- that project was the one that finally convinced me that dye lots are A Thing), and no one actually said anything along the lines of, "Why the hell do you think that will work?" Now, it might have worked, had I done any math or taken any measurements, or, you know, swatched. Instead, I knit, and knit, and knit, and in the end, I had a Goodale in Malabrigo Worsted that fit my 6' tall Hawaiian friend. I was aiming for a sweater for me-- 5'2" on a good day, and while I'm curvy, I'm no polynesian princess.

This calendar year, I set myself a goal of knitting four adult sweaters. I'm finishing up the third (I think I might actually make my revised deadline of the end of this month!) and swatching for the fourth. I've decided I want to use the MadelineTosh Tosh Merino that's been in my stash for awhile; it's a beautiful worsted weight singles, and while I don't generally love either singles (pretty, but pilly) or MadTosh (pretty, but there's something about the dye that she uses that makes me not like the texture) I'm committed to this sweater. And I'm committed to making it fit. My first sweater of the year mostly fits-- it's a little too short in both the body and the sleeve, and a little boxy. I think I want more negative ease and more length in the body, and a commitment to either three-quarter length sleeves or full-length sleeves, not a weird inbetween. My second sweater has both those things, and as an open cardigan mostly fits-- but I like to close my cardigans, so I need to measure and take into account the difference between my cross-back measurement and the corresponding front measurement.

So, I'm swatching away, and pattern hunting too. I need something relatively simple-- the colorway and nature of singles will swallow up most textural details-- and I've got about 1200 yards to play with.

I've been trying something new this week: monogamous knitting. I had originally wanted to finish Devin's sweater by the end of September, but between the heat and moving that didn't happen-- now I'm aiming for the end of this month.

I finished the sleeves and joined them to the torso, and am preparing to start the yoke decreases.

But guys, monogamy is hard. I keep getting distracted by other patterns-- a cabled sweater for my dad, two different colorwork sweaters I want to try-- and without even thinking about it, I've pulled yarn out and pulled out patterns, and then I put everything away again and pull Devin's sweater back out of its bag and knit a couple of rows... before starting to think about the two pairs of socks I want to cast on before the end of the month for Sock Knitters Anonymous.

Somewhere in there I decided to reorganize my list, so this week it might look a little different than in weeks past, but the project count is still the same. The other sections will make a return next week; this week's been all about unpacking, donation runs to Goodwill, and sweater knitting.

I know my list looks about the same, but what I did was to take some of the constraints off my items-- so instead of saying "I'll be knitting this exact sweater," I've decided to specify that I'll be making a sweater, out of fingering weight, but I can choose a pattern when I'm ready to cast on. This makes me less antsy. I also realized I might double dip a bit-- for example, when I get around to casting on my October socks, one will be for Mom and the other for Dad, and I think the colorwork sweater will be fingering weight...

We moved this past weekend, so any thought I had about maybe taking a sleeve picture, or a picture of my new "wool room" (it's not as exciting as it sounds, but I get a kick out of saying it), or even a picture of the living room that is large enough to actually have my couch AND armchair in it simultaneously... anyway, pictures of all those things will have to wait until I unearth my camera cord. And my camera. At least there's internet, right? And I have my stash back, although it's currently buried in the back of the wool room, behind the pieces of my desk, boxes of old curriculum that I should have recycled years ago, and a sewing machine I agreed to take because sewing is one of those things I think I ought to do.

I have a lot of unpacking to do.

Year of Projects List (week 12/50)

Project: KnittingFrom the 2012 list

Devin's Irish Sweater (CO 20 May 2012; pattern: Killybegs with Cascade Eco+) I'm knitting the first sleeve, even though I've yet to take a picture of it... but it's past Devin's elbow.

Project: Spinningweeks 1-4: Corriedale in "Iceberg" ~ 6 & 1/2 ouncesweeks 5-10: Abstract Fiber 2-tone BFL in "Laurelhurst" week 11: lanithium ex machina fuschia mystery sample ~ 1/3 ounce. No spinning this week-- I do know where my spindles are, and some fiber, but I've been dead on my feet by the end of the day, and my hands are pretty wrecked from packing and unpacking my 35 boxes of books...

Project: Big Life Event274 days...

Project: Weight Watchers

I know skipping weigh-in two weeks in a row is bad, but sometimes life happens. And moving. I did download an app that's a really good calorie counter (My Fitness Pal? I think?) to supplement the weight watcher's app which often doesn't have the food I tend to eat (I think because I have to be gluten free and I tend to eat a lot of "ethnic" cuisine, which is rather limited in the WW's database).

So, I had this post ready-set-go, and then I realized, when clicking over to Tami's Amis that it's Wednesday, not Friday, and therefore I should have taken pictures of my sleeve-in-progress, not my finished sock. I didn't, so instead I'll punt. Bear with me, and I promise sleeve pictures soon!

not my picture; click for link.

not my picture; click for link

The two pictures above are examples of a pullover I'm contemplating as I gear up towards colorwork (the pattern is Umbrellas by Joji, and the picture on the left is hers). It was written for Malabrigo Sock, and as much as I love Mal Sock, I know fair isle (even without steeking) can be tricky to work in superwash wool. The sample on the right is knit in MadelineTosh ToshMerino Light, and as lovely as it is, that too is a superwash wool (although as a single it's probably "stickier" than a plied superwash). Anyway, if I were to make this, and I'm spending an alarming amount of time contemplating it considering it's entirely not on my list for the year, I'd want to substitute wool-- and I spent some time at a LYS yesterday picking up and putting down contenders... For the record, I walked out without any purchases.

Knitted Wit Featherweight is probably my best choice-- it's a 2-ply, slightly rustic Rambouillet, from a local dyer I pretty much adore (even though she tends more towards pastels than I enjoy).

Pros: "sticky" and local

Cons: I'm not crazy about the color put-ups, and I would have to invest in a sweater-quanity up front since it's hand-dyed.

not my picture, click for link

The other option I'm considering is Spud & Chloe Fine-- which is a wool/silk blend. It's not superwash, but the silk content may make it less "sticky," on the other hand, it has amazing drape potential and is from a relatively big company (Blue Sky Alpacas) so I"m less likely to have to alternate skeins in the body-- although I'll still have to watch the dye lots.

Pros: readily available, and silk for drape

Cons: harder to make nice looking stitches/floats due to silk? Also, I don't always love working with silk.

Anyway, I guess my work-in-progress for this week (other than an unphotographed sleeve) is continuing to think about colorwork... and I'd love to hear from more experienced folk in the comments.

And now, because I can't help it, and I did take the pictures, dammit, here is my finished pair of Circus Socks. It was a toe-up, short row heel, k3p1 rib on the fly, and they're almost the same size-- one of the feet is a little smaller, and one of the cuffs is a little longer, both by maybe one row, and I've decided not to care.

The color looks a little washed out on my monitor, but these are predominantly orange and pink with red and yellow and green mini stripes throughout. Made from the sublime Shibui Sock in Zinnea, and for my size 6.5-7 feet I used under two skeins.

A couple of months ago-- actually right around the time I "moved" to this blog-- Mom and I decided to sign up for a Craftsy class. They were having a sale, and we've been talking about modifying patterns for fit among ourselves, and it seemed like a really good idea; so we signed up for Fit Your Knits with Stefanie Japel. Between then and now, we haven't actually sat down to watch it, but I've gotten occasional emails from Craftsy and ended up signing up for two other classes on my own: Spinning Dyed Fibers with Felicia Lo (from Sweet Georgia Yarns) and The Fair Isle Vest: Stranded & Steeked with Mary Jane Mucklestone.

Both of these classes focus on color, although in two different ways, and they've convinced me that while I may still be hesitant about my own color sense that doesn't mean I should avoid it altogether!

definitely NOT my picture. click for a link.

As a knitter, I've avoided anything more adventurous than stripes-- and I haven't even been willing to stripe anything other than scarves. For one thing, I love texture and I rationalized that I could happily knit cables and lace and textured stitches for the rest of my life and never feel like I was missing out on colorwork-- which is primarily in stockinette anyway. For another thing, I love hand-dyed yarn, so if I was ever craving color I could let the skein do the work for me. But the real reason I've avoided color is because I'm bad at it. I'm bad at the techniques involved, and I'm really horrid at choosing and matching colors. Growing up that latter piece seemed to make a kind of sense to me-- I'm relatively gifted in the traditional academic subjects, and it seemed "fair" that for balance I'm abysmal at sports and visual arts (and a number of other things, let's be clear... many of much more practical than school, like driving). So my knitting life, thus far, has been one of choosing one colorway per project and moving forward. I had a steep and unpleasant learning curve involving pooling and flashing in my beloved hand-dyed sock yarn, but after copious reading, I developed an understanding of lengths of color and numbers of stitches that, while not "solving" the problem, at least means I'm less surprised by my results.

Then I started spinning.

I approached choosing fiber like choosing yarn-- I paid a lot of attention to fiber type, and I chose colors in single lots, thinking I would just spin it up and it would act like hand-dyed variegated sock yarn. Turns out, not so much. The colors that I loved as pure areas in the fiber would mix in spinning, and get muddy. If I kept them clear, and plied them, I got beautiful barber poles that knit up into headache-inducing swatches of so many colors it was a wonder nobody had a seizure. I was resigning myself to spinning up unusable yarn when Felica Lo's class came to my attention... and I figured, what was there to lose?

I am really grateful to whoever put that class on the roster and available to the public. While I was initially concerned that it was a wheel-based class, and as a spindle spinner the techniques wouldn't really translate, I was very happy to discover that with very few exceptions the techniques weren't about spinning at all! More than half the class is a discussion of color theory and its application to fiber as a medium. Ms. Lo is a wonderful, soft-spoken teacher with a deep understanding of color and a clear love of all things fiber. There's a slight focus on creating striping yarn, but even within those lessons, there's so much more information available about the interplay of color and the options a spinner has to truly create unique and intentional effects.

not my picture. click for the link.

Having dipped my toe into the pool of color in spinning, I found myself thinking of the many projects I'd previously rejected because they were colorwork, and I don't knit that. Specifically, I was salivating over Kate Davies' designs. I came across The Fair Isle Vest, and buoyed by my experience with Spinning with Dyed Fibers, I decided to give it a try.

Once again, I was so thrilled that I'd taken the chance. Ms. Mucklestone has an open and enthusiastic manner that immediately soothed my first-timer jitters. While much of the information in the lessons is widely applicable to sweater/vest knitting in general, the specific close-up shots of holding the yarn, comparing yarn dominance, setting up a steek and finishing one (which still looks like something I'm going to want to do a shot before attempting!) and weaving in all the ends (or not) was so useful I didn't mind the lecture on the importance of gauge and swatching (and blocking). I do wish the camera angles on the close-ups had been a little more mindful of her hands blocking her actual work, but over all I was incredibly satisfied.

Resulting Projects

Spinning Dyed Fibers gave me a new perspective on how to look at the many, many braids of handdyed fiber I have in my stash-- and some ideas on how to treat them so I wouldn't end up with a muddy knit fabric at the other end. While I still don't feel a hundred percent confident about my own eye for color and color combinations, I do feel a little more free to experiment, and a little less confused by my inconsistent results.

I picked a braid from my stash-- it's a 2-tone BFL from Abstract Fiber in Laurelhurst-- and I'm in the process of trying out Fractal Spinning, which is just a fancy way of making sort of marled or tweedy stripes. I'm not sure how it's going to turn out, since I'm still a rather inconsistent spinner, but I'm looking forward to finding out! My hope is to end up with two skeins of about 2 oz each; I split the original 4 oz braid in half, and then in half again, and I'm planning on making a 2-ply (which I guess is obvious since it's Fractal Spinning), so in theory, it should work.

this one is my actual photo, of the fiber that I'm currently spinning before I started.

I found Mary Jane Mucklestone's class after I'd already started looking into colorwork-- really, I would say it started with my obsession with this hat. I want to make this hat so, so badly! I'd heard from some experienced stranded knitters that it wasn't the most friendly of stranded patterns, simply due to the length of some of the floats, so I started looking around for two things: the first was a practice pattern, something that both appealed to me so I wouldn't get bored, while being simple enough to be about the colorwork and not about shaping or fit or fiber, or any of the other dozen things that make a project interesting; and the second was a really good resource about how to go about actually doing colorwork.

For the latter, I started at the library, with a book that I would recommend to anyone, and may end up purchasing when buying books doesn't mean immediately packing them into a box: The Essential Guide to Color Knitting by Margaret Radcliffe. This was a great resource for someone just starting out in the world of color, with a section on color theory, one on stitch patterns that incorporate color in different ways, and a really extensive section on the various methods of colorwork. I loved it, and I read it cover to cover. However, since I knew that my goal was stranded fair isle, on that same trip to the library I grabbed 200 Fair Isle Motifs, by Mary Jane Mucklestone, because in addition to being an extensive pattern dictionary, it includes an entire section on the history of Fair Isle knitting, how it differs from other stranded knitting techniques (like Icelandic, for instance), and on Shetland yarn and substituting for Shetland yarn (I want to make The Hat in Shetland, but I'm thinking I want to practice with something from stash).

It happened that Craftsy was having a(nother) sale around that time, and recognizing the instructor for The Fair Isle Vest I signed up for it... even though I didn't much care for the actual vest. Having taken it, I'm so glad that I did because it was a wonderful resource, and will continue to be as I start this colorwork kick I can feel coming on, but I still don't think I'll be making that vest. While I think I'd like to (eventually) try a large garment that incorporates colorwork, I doubt that I'll be making one for myself, or Devin, or either of my parents with an all-over motif. We're all, um... larger as opposed to smaller people, and with that in mind not a single one of us wears things with small repeating patterns covering our torsos. As for making something like that for anyone else... My dearest knit-worthy friends live in Tucson, Arizona. They don't wear sweaters.

not my picture... but I miss those cacti!

What I've settled on for a practice pattern is a lovely motif from Mason Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines, in two colors, which I can make out of blue and red alpaca I have in my stash. The original pattern is for a blanket, and I certainly don't have enough yarn for that (or patience!), but I think a pillow or possibly even a small lap throw can be eked out of the stash without engaging in a game of chicken. And while this project is going to make me practice steeking (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), with only two colors to wrangle the whole project through, I think it'll help me nail down my technique before I move on to The Hat or any other poly-colored project... Plus, it's really pretty, and stash-busting is a good thing.

this is the photo for the ravelry pattern page. click for the link.

So there you have it-- my experience with the Craftsy platform thus far. I highly recommend it, I think especially if you're a person who wants the benefit of instruction but is wary of taking a class on someone else's timeline. In fact, that's probably somewhere in their mission statement! I was really drawn in by how friendly and happy both of the instructors were to be involved in the Craftsy platform, and while the standard price for classes seems a little steep (at least, it did to me), the truth is they're like reference books-- the initial investment may be high but the continued use overtime makes every penny well spent.

Of course, I collect dictionaries.

I also watched one of the freebie classes, Know Your Wool with Deborah Robson. I've read the book this class is based on (cover to cover, over the course of a month or two. It was my bedtime reading, although I had to stop waking Devin up to show her pictures of sheep because, well, she'd really rather sleep) so the class was more review than anything else, but if you're curious about Craftsy and want to try it without buying anything, it's an interesting class.